1 Corinthians 1:17-25
Hear God’s word, 1 Corinthians
1, beginning at 17. For Christ did not send me to
baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent
wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For
the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but
to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is
written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment
of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise?
Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this
age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For
since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through
wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to
save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks
seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But
to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the
power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God
is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Amen. This is God’s gracious
word. Some of you will remember the
funny papers. Every day, a little section in the back of the, usually
the B section of the paper, a black and white page of cartoons. But
on Sundays, that was the motherlode, right? The color section of the
funnies. The fuller length comic strips.
And some of you will remember Dennis the Menace. the little
blonde boy who gave Mr. Wilson quite a doing. And something about Dennis the
Menace we remember if we read that comic strip. He always said
out loud what ought to have been kept silent. There’s a cartoon,
I’ve got it on the bookshelf in my office, and it’s a picture
of Dennis the Menace standing by the minister at the back door.
And he says to the minister, you must be a good swimmer. Uh,
my dad says you were long winded. Uh, that’s yeah, there you go. That’s, um, probably how most
of us at some point in time, hopefully not anymore. Think
of preaching, right? Preaching equals suffering. Right? Sitting through Sunday messages
equals hardship. And very often it is. Very often
it can be painful to sit through a Sunday sermon. But I want to
point out to you today what Paul points out. It is a uniquely
Christian activity. It is the way of Christian people
through the centuries to read the Bible, to explain the Bible,
to apply the Bible. And it’s as simple as that. Maybe
you go to the grocery store on rotisserie chicken day. I forget
what day it is at Harris Teeter, but you know, people stand in
line for those and you take it home and you pick it clean. You
get all the good off the bone, and that’s kind of the idea over
the centuries of Christian preaching. You take the Bible, you take
the passage, you take the verse, and the minister, the scribe,
the priest, the Levite, whoever, the apostle, they pick it clean
and then present all the good to the congregation and serve
it. In the history of God’s people,
You’ve had Levites and priests. You’ve had scribes. You’ve had
Jesus. You’ve had John the Baptist. You’ve had the 12 apostles, the
70 Jesus sent out. You have the apostles in the
early church. And since Paul’s writing of Ephesians
chapter four, where he tells us the ascended Christ gave gifts
to the church and the primary gift to the church after apostles
was the pastor teacher. And so since the death of the
last apostle, churches have employed a pastor teacher to read the
Bible, to explain the Bible and to apply the Bible. Now in church
history, we’re a little weak these days, there were very often
daily services. daily services where the Bible
was read, explained, and applied. Now, primarily it happened on
the Sabbath in our tradition. Since the Reformation, it’s morning
and evening. We have a rich history of Christian
education, not only in the church, but in Christian schools and
colleges and universities around the world. And what Christians
have believed, and it’s true, is the Bible forms a people. God has always formed a people
for himself through the ministry of his word. And he’s done it
by personally speaking to Abraham, or sending prophets like Samuel,
or sending the major and the minor prophets to Israel, sending
John the baptizer as the last of the Old Testament prophets,
sending Jesus, raising up disciples and apostles and pastors and
teachers. The word of the King exercises
lordship over the church. And so when we think about preaching,
we think about how God has sent his emissaries, his apostles,
his ministers, his heralds, to give them the word of the living
God. We each have a lifelong need
for the preaching of the word, the reading and the explanation
and the application of God’s word. We like to say two things
about the ministry of the word that come right out of the catechism.
The word on the one hand convinces and converts sinners. out of
darkness and into light, convinces and converts sinners out of their
own self and a life unto God. But the scriptures read and preached
also comfort and build up saints in the most holy faith. So on
any given day, when God’s word is opened, when God’s word is
read, explained and applied, insofar and it is faithful, people
may get convinced and converted, and saints may be comforted and
built up in their most holy faith. And so preaching is a uniquely
Christian activity. I think about two years ago when
we were in the book of Acts, there was one Sunday where we
looked at some of the word ministry words. I know that sounds redundant,
but in the scriptures, there are ministry of the word words. Like there’s a word in the New
Testament for evangelism. There’s a word in the New Testament
for just regular old teaching, but there is a special word in
the New Testament for preaching. And it simply means heralding. You think of maybe books you
read like Robin Hood or movies you’ve watched about the old
world. Kings sent heralds throughout the land and they would say,
you know, hear ye, hear ye. The King gives this message to
you. And that is in a sense what the
ministry, of preachers is. They are sent by God, sent by
the king to herald the good news of the kingdom and also the way
or the laws of the kingdom of God. Today, we want to think
about a couple of things from what Paul says to the Corinthian
church. What we preach How we preach,
we’re going to think about the effect of preaching, the preaching
the world wants, and then the foolishness and the weakness
of God. So first, what we preach. Verse
17, Paul says, for Christ did not send, there’s the apostle
word, he did not send me to baptize. Remember they’re fussing over
who got baptized by who? That’s what we looked at last
week. Christ did not send me to baptize. Well, he did, but
He’s trying to settle a dispute, but he sent me primarily to preach
the gospel. I was sent, Paul says, to preach
the gospel. And then in verse 23, he says,
we preach Christ crucified. And throughout this passage in
these handful of verses, it says of the content of preaching,
what we preach, we preach the gospel. We preach the cross of
Christ. We preach the word of the cross.
We preach the power of the cross. We preach the power of God, the
wisdom of God. And then it even goes on to say,
we preach the foolishness of God. And that’s what most will
think of the Christian message. You’re preaching a message about
a man who died on a cross, a symbol of execution, a symbol of shame.
What an odd message you are preaching. And we’ll see in a few moments
how the Jews interpreted it. We’ll see in a moment or so how
the Greeks interpreted it and how the debaters of the age interpreted
it. But yes, we do preach the cross. We think about the big
picture of the scripture, the big picture of human history,
creation. God made the world and everything in it, including
man. He made man righteous. Then we
think about the word fall or the lapse when man fell into
sin. And instead of obeying God perfectly,
he failed to keep God’s command not to eat the forbidden fruit.
And so then we think of redemption. The shadows of redemption came
when God came looking for Adam and Eve in the garden. In the
cool of the day, they were hiding. They were covered with fig leaves
they had taken and sown together. And when God found them, He said
those won’t do. A self-made covering for sin
and shame won’t do. And so an animal lost its life.
The skins were sacrificed and made at least temporarily a suitable
covering. And that covering would point
to the great exchange that we would have in Jesus. He would
give us his righteous robes and he would take our filthy rags. And so the message of the cross
is the message of how God reconciles sinners to himself. Sinners to
himself. Remember, Adam and Eve were banished
from the garden. They were kept safe from the
tree of life, lest they took from that tree of life and ate.
and lived eternally in a state of sin and misery. God left the
door open for his wonderful plan of redemption, where he would
send his son, not born of human parentage, lest he bring with
him to the life he would live the original sin of Adam, but
he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb
of the Virgin Mary. He was born of her yet without
sin. And so The sin of Adam was not imputed to him. And when
he went to the cross, he had passed the test of righteousness.
Where Adam failed in the beautiful and plentiful garden, where Adam
had failed to obey God perfectly, Jesus, even in the wilderness,
40 days, 40 nights without food, passed the test. When Satan offered
him the kingdoms, Satan said, jump from the temple and command
the angels. You’re hungry, turn these stones into bread. Each
time the Lord answered with scripture. And he did what Adam should have
done in the garden and told Satan where he could go. Should have
taken the garden tool. And like we do a snake in the
garden, we chop off its head and we dispose of its body. But no, they listened to the
voice of Satan and they ate the forbidden fruit. But at the cross,
Jesus took on all our sins. The scripture says, he who knew
no sin became sin for us in the order that we might be the righteousness
of almighty God. And so how does a holy God restore
sinners to himself? How does he undo the banishment? How does he make peace with us?
Well, his perfect son died the death that was our death. His
perfect son went to the cross that was our cross. And so his
death became our death. His atoning sacrifice paid for
our sins. But also the perfect obedience
of Jesus has now become ours. And the world says this is craziness.
This is foolishness. It’s not flashy enough. It’s
not sparkly enough. It doesn’t sell. But to us, the
gospel is not foolishness, but it is the wisdom of God. You
think for a moment, how does God, the holy and righteous one,
how does he deal with sin? Does he lift up the rug and sweep
it under? Does he dust around the stuff
on the table instead of picking it up and cleaning the whole
table? Does he only clean up what is seen and just make us
look pretty? No, he goes the radical way. A human had to die,
and so we have the incarnation. A spotless lamb had to die, and
so Jesus was perfectly righteous and obedient. A satisfaction
had to be made, and it couldn’t be made by the blood of bulls
and goats and beasts. On Jewish altars, as we sing,
slain, it had to be the perfect lamb of God. Well, how’s he gonna
make that effectual or effective to us? Because we’re never gonna
believe it. He gives us the gift of faith. It gives us regeneration. He gives us new hearts. He gives
us the new birth. What does Jesus say? Unless you
are born again, unless you are born from above, you remain flesh,
you remain in death. And so when we come to faith
in Jesus, all the blessings accomplished at the cross, all the blessings
and realities of heaven are now ours in Jesus Christ. And so
that is what we preach. Nothing else, nothing less, nothing
more. Just plain and simple. We preach
the blood atonement of a savior on a cross at Calvary. Weird
and strange as it may be, it is what the King has given to
the heralds to preach and to proclaim. Well, the second thing
is how we preach. And verse 17 simply says, not
with eloquent wisdom. not with the wisdom of the wise.
And to maybe rephrase it a little bit, not with cross emptying
ways. We preach not with eloquent wisdom,
not with wisdom of the wise, not in cross emptying ways. Now
remember Paul is a super smart fella. He has what many today
would equate to two PhDs. He was raised up in the Roman
world. He was taught at the feet of
Gamaliel, who was the great teacher in Jerusalem. He was a really
sharp guy. He was eloquent. He was sharp.
He could argue. He knew his rhetoric, his logic.
He knew how to debate. He knew the laws and the systems,
and he could out-talk you. But he still only gave the content
that Jesus gave to him after the road to Damascus and his
little stretch of several years in Arabia, where we believe Christ
taught Paul personally. Somewhere back in the 1970s in
the American church, some sort of newfangled preachers came
along and they said, why don’t people go to church? And so one
well noted pastor in the Chicago area went around knocking on
doors, why don’t you go to church? The answer is easy, right? We hate God, right? You don’t
need to knock on doors to find that out. Why don’t people go
to church? Because they don’t worship God. Why don’t they worship God?
Well, because they don’t know him or they hate him. Well, anyway,
they went to the door to door. Why don’t you go to church? And
so they took a survey and what they did is kind of worldly,
worldly wise. They said, we’re going to make
church for the unchurched. Now that’s just weird. That’s
just wacky. Now, Evangelism, good. Telling people about Jesus,
great. But church is for Christians. Church is for the people of God.
So they might worship their God and hear from him as he’s proclaimed
Sunday by Sunday in his word. But, but they said, you know,
let’s, let’s, let’s make a church for seekers. Let’s make a church
for whatever. And, you know, you guys are smart.
I’ve been through the Jay Gresham Machen class on Christianity
and liberalism. And there’s a point where you
strip down church far enough, it is no longer a church. It’s a variety show and it has
a TED Talk. That’s kind of where this went. And since then, the main group
here has repented and said, we had it all wrong. And that’s
good. That’s progress. But the church
is for Christians. It’s where Christians worship
God. They’re gathered and equipped by the word, formed by the word,
to do the work of the ministry. Yes, it’s also for sinners. We
welcome non-Christians into the church. And we hope that they
see us do something really strange and weird and otherworldly. And
they say, what is it you’re doing? And why are you doing it? And
we tell them about Jesus Christ and we hope they hear the gospel.
I think this Wednesday in the ladies confession of faith study,
we’re going to look at the little phrase that says outside the
church, there is ordinarily no salvation. That’s a very controversial
phrase. It comes right out of our confession
of faith. And the idea is this, the church
has the gospel. The church has the ministry of
the word. The church has the keys to the kingdom. And how
do people ordinarily, that’s the key word, get saved? They
get saved by a herald being sent who proclaims Jesus and proclaims
the cross and the way of salvation. And so what happens when the
church repackages the gospel? What happens when they defang
God? What happens when they try to
make the gospel more palatable? What happens when we take syncretism,
the mixing of religions, and we baptize it? We sprinkle enough
Jesus on it to make it sound holy and to make it sound decent. What Paul is saying here is how
we preach is just plain Jane, meat and potatoes. We offer Jesus,
we offer the Bible, we offer the gospel, we don’t apologize
for it. We’re unashamed. And yes, there
is a form to preaching, there’s studying, there’s Bible preparation,
there is all the rest. But what Paul is saying to the
Corinthians who love hearing this and that and the other from
the Jews and the Greeks and the Romans and from the traveling
sophists, the peddlers of wisdom, he’s saying we are unashamed
to simply preach. the cross. So what we preach,
the cross, how we preach without flowery language, eloquent wisdom,
not with the wisdom of the wise and for sure not in cross emptying
ways. Think about the effect of preaching.
What is the effect of preaching? Well, verse 18 tells us the word
of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us
who are being saved, it is the power of God. Preaching has two
effects, one to those who are being saved, one to those who
remain dead in their sins and trespasses and who are continuing
to perish. And then verse 21, since in the
wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom,
it pleased God through the folly of what we preach. That’s the
cross. to save those who believe. Notice the effect of preaching,
it’s twofold. To those who are perishing, to
those who are dead in their sins and trespasses, to those who,
as the hymn says, are fast-bound in sin and nature’s night, who
hear the gospel but don’t hear it, who see the gospel but don’t
see it, who perceive, or don’t perceive the gospel, they are
perishing, and to them, the cross of Jesus is folly. Another place
Paul will say of the preaching of the gospel, it is a stench
to those who reject it. It is a stench to those who reject
it. You know, sometimes in our well-intentioned evangelism,
we think if I just tell somebody about Jesus, they’re going to
fall flat on their face and say, golly gee, I never heard such
a good deal. And we mentioned the funny papers a little bit
ago. Remember on Sunday, the coupon papers? You know, you
flip through and you can save on Colgate and you can save on
head and shoulders. You could save on your hairspray,
all the rest. And people love the Sunday paper, not just for
the funnies, but for the coupons. And you think, wow, what a good
deal. Why would you not take that coupon in the store and
get it? And I think sometimes we think that way with the gospel.
You don’t want to go to hell, do you? Well, just pray this
prayer. You don’t want to go to hell,
do you? Just pray this prayer and you’ve got to get out of
hell free card. That’s sort of where the gospel is these days,
but people still aren’t buying it. It is folly to them because
they are perishing. Notice that word perishing. It’s
an active word. They remain dead in their sins
and trespasses. They are dead men, women, boys
and girls walking. They don’t hear the gospel. They
don’t see Jesus. They scoff at it. They poke at
it. And for them, it is a stench of death. Paul’s going to mention
the gospel, the cross, as a stumbling block to the Jews. You know,
the trick you play when you’re a teenager, you know, you get
behind your friend and when they turn around, they trip over you.
Kind of the stumbling block. Or in the scriptures, this would
be the word scandalous. This is scandalous to them. They
can’t get over the absurdity of the cross. Or what does the
scripture say about Jesus? God says, I’ve laid a stone in
Zion, a cornerstone, a precious stone. And it comes from the
Psalms. It’s repeated again in the scriptures. And that stone is Jesus Christ,
the cornerstone of the church. And it is a stumbling block,
a rock of offense to many. Just because it’s good news to
you, and thank the Lord for that, it will not be good news to others
who are actively perishing. But yet we still preach the gospel. It also tells us this is folly
to the Gentiles or moronic. They don’t believe, they reject
the word of God. And so that’s one effect of preaching.
You can see this sometimes when you’re in ministry, you can see
people with their arms crossed, you can see the scowls. I remember
being met at the back door one time, someone was livid that
I was making something gospel clear. It has that effect. But to those who are being saved,
To those who are being saved, and notice, not perishing, but
being saved. It is the power of God. And while it is a stench to those
who aren’t being saved, it is a fragrance, Paul says in another
place. It is a fragrance to those who
are being saved. We understand that God in eternity
past set his affection upon us, and though we fell into sin and
were duped by Satan, We heard the gospel call. We had a new
heart. We received Jesus by faith. Our sins were washed away. The
obedience of Jesus was credited to us. God justified us, seeing
us as if we’ve never sinned and looking on us as if we have always
obeyed because in us he sees Jesus. And so to those being
saved, it is a fragrance. To those being saved, know that
God is sanctifying us and will one day glorify us and will one
day bring us in to the heavens. And so to us, it’s scandalous
that others don’t believe. It’s moronic to us that others
do not believe. You know, sometimes as a preacher,
you can kind of get to wondering, well, if I say this, yeah, it’s
in the Bible, but if I say this, people aren’t going to like me.
Or if I say this, I’ll lose popularity points. Or if I say this, it
won’t be received well. And that is tempting no matter
who you are and in what church you serve and the view of the
Bible. And that’s why we live in a mishmash church world. Just
this week, a well-known seminary in our nation, a place that trains
ministers for 75 years or so, just said something wishy-washy
like this. We want to reaffirm that marriage
is between a man and a woman. But we recognize there’s other
views. Well, are there? I mean, you can’t say one thing
and then turn right around and say the other. There either is
a view or there is not a view, but that’s the world we live
in. We’re trying to be all things to all people, defame God, empty
the cross of its power, and we get just that, the effect. Uh, is nothing. Uh, there is,
there is no good that comes from it. It’s just simply put the
job of the minister, the job of the apostle, the job of the
prophet, the job of the Levite, the priest, you, the evangelist
to lay it out there and let the spirit do its work. You may get
ridiculed. You may get laughed at. But you
remember how it was when you first heard the gospel in a saving
way. You think of that hymn by Wesley
where you were fast bound in sin and nature’s night, you were
in prison and in the dungeon. What are we saying? Thine eye
diffused a quickening ray. My chains fell off, my heart
was free, I rose and went forth, and I followed Thee. The effect
of preaching, the effect of telling the gospel can be wonderful.
So what we preach, the cross, how we preach, without all the
flowery, eloquent, worldly stuff. The effect of preaching is a
stench to some, a fragrance to others, wisdom to some, folly
to others. What about the preaching the
world wants? In a sense we’ve touched on this,
but verse 19 and verse 20 and 22 and 23 spell this out a little
more clearly. God says, I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever. You know, a lot
of ministry is done in Jesus name that is cute. It is clever. It is worldly wisdom. You know,
you go to a lot of, I don’t know, kind of broad churches today.
And this isn’t across the board, but it’s pretty broad. And you
get a rock and roll concert and a TED talk. That’s about what
it is. It’s the wisdom of the wise.
It’s the cleverness of the clever. God says, I’ll thwart it and
I’ll destroy it. And then he says in verse 20,
where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is
the debater of this age? He’s speaking of the Jews. He’s
speaking of the Greco-Romans. He’s speaking of the sophists,
the wise talkers. And he says, God has made all
that foolish. He’s shown it to be false. He
says in verse 22, Jews demand signs, Greeks, Seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to the Jews, followed by the Gentiles. You
see, the Jews don’t like the cross because their Messiah,
who was supposed to be big, bad and revolutionary. Remember,
they didn’t understand Jesus coming. Why is he on a donkey?
Why is he not carrying a sword? Why is he not on a horse? Why
is this gentle and lowly guy coming and dying on a Roman cross
of execution? That’s bad. So the Jews can’t
understand it. Then of course the Romans don’t
understand it. Why are y’all deifying a guy who died on one
of our horrible Roman crosses? In polite company in Rome, you
didn’t speak of the cross or crucifixion. And yet that’s what
Paul is preaching. And then the wisdom of the world,
the wisdom of the scribe, the wisdom of this age, this is absolutely
nothing. But where was Paul preaching?
He was going to the synagogues, stumbling block. He was going
to the marketplaces. This guy’s talking about an execution
tool. He’s going to the public squares.
What’s he babbling on about, they would say. He was going
to the debate halls. I can’t tell you how many times
in ministry life somebody’s come to me and said, you know, you
really ought to take a Toastmasters class. Okay. You know, they teach you how
to make a speech. Toastmasters and preaching are two different
things. One is of this world and one is of the next. And if
you go to Toastmasters and you can make a good Toastmasters
speech and you have a Toastmasters plaque, great. Sometimes I’ll
have a lawyer come to you. Well, I only have three minutes
before the judge. And so therefore a sermon should last three minutes.
Okay. I’ve heard that a number of times.
And on and on the advice comes, but what does Paul tell Timothy?
Paul tells Timothy, make it your aim to labor in the reading of
the word and in the preaching of the word. And that doesn’t
mean you have to be long winded like Dennis the Menace. It doesn’t
mean you have to bore people to death. It doesn’t mean you
have to beat a dead horse. And we all do it. We’re all very
good at it as ministers. I was told a couple of months
ago that Sinclair Ferguson, you know, known him, listened to
his messages. He preached somewhere on a Sunday
night. Somebody came up to him after the message, which I’m
sure was wonderful. And they said, Dr. Ferguson,
great sermon. He says, oh, it was dog meat.
What is the phrase? Was it Spurgeon who said, I wouldn’t
walk across the street. to hear my own preaching. Yes,
men, feeble men, weak men are the preachers. But we’re not
to be like worldly wise men and, oh, what is it? Bunions. Bunyan’s allegory, worldly wise
men and carnal policy. Wasn’t that his message? The
Jews demand signs. We want to see something big
happen. The debaters of this age wanted to be rhetorically
perfect. The syncretism of today wants
something unoffensive and encouraging. And so what we preach, how we
preach, the effect of preaching, The preaching of what the world
wants. But last, think about what God
declares. Verse 25, he declares that the
foolishness of God is wiser than men. It’s kind of backwards,
isn’t it? God’s foolishness or God’s weakest,
and there is no weakest spot in him or foolish spot in him,
but the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The weakness
of God is stronger than men. Think about this for a moment,
the strength of God and the word of God. When God speaks, stuff
happens. When there was nothing, he spoke
and the world came to be. Remember in Ezekiel 37, the prophet
was asked, can these bones live in the valley of dry bones? Oh,
Lord, you know. And so what did God do? He spoke
and those bones rattled. He spoke and the sinews attached
to the bones and skin covered them. And those bones, by the
breath of God, the word of God, the power of God came to life.
A few weeks ago, we thought about Lazarus on Easter Sunday. And
what did Jesus do? He went to the top of the tomb
and said, Lazarus, the name, come forth. And Lazarus came
forth and he’s called each of you out of the grave from death
to life. And so the power of what we preach,
the power of what is foolish, in the world’s eyes, what is
weak in the world’s eyes is strength with God, is wisdom with God. The cross is not foolish. We
understand that. Scripture needs no apology. We
understand that intellectually. And think of this, God could
have gotten his message across any way he wanted to. He could
have left up a big star like he did when Jesus was born. He
could have only given gifted people the office of ministry. He could
have sent angels to speak it. He could have even left Jesus
on earth. But this is what he did. He left men and he left
weak men. He left foolish men who preach
the foolishness of the gospel. And it’s by the power of the
spirit that these things work. Think about this, if you will,
God has been outwitting people who think they’re wise for a
while. He was outwitting Lucifer from day one. He outwitted the
Egyptian magicians in Moses and Aaron’s presence. In our passage
from Isaiah 29, he’s outwitted the Assyrians. He’s gonna outwit
the Babylonians. He even outwits Job. Remember,
it’s like, what, 35 chapters of God browbeating Job? Job is
not wise, but God is. And he’s given the church the
foolishness of the preaching. And if people don’t hear the
message of the cross now, there’s something they will see. What
does the scripture tell us that at the end of the age there will
be? There will be the visible manifestation of Jesus. Every
eye will see him. And even the eyes of those who
nailed him to the cross, they will look at him. And there was
a wise man at the foot of the cross. He said, surely this man
was the son of God. But at this day, it will be too
late. It will be too late to call on the name of Jesus and
acknowledge him as the savior of sinners. And so the message
of Isaiah is important to us today. Seek the Lord while he
may be found and call on him while he is near. The cross is
not foolishness, but it is the most beautiful sight to every
dear Christian. Let’s do give him thanks. Our
Lord, we thank you for the strangeness of what we believe. If we really think about it,
it’s kind of wacky. But because we have wisdom from above and
not from below, because you’ve opened our eyes and our hearts
to see things the world does not behold, we understand the
majesty of the cross and the beauty of the cross and the weight
of the cross. Lord, every bit of our lives
ought to be cross-centered. Run through the cross. If it’s
not a cross, based, it ought not to be believed and held and
trusted. So thank you for doing such a
strange thing, a strange design it is, but it’s what has saved
us and we give you thanks and we pray in Christ mighty name.
Amen. We want to worship our God and
respond to him by singing lift high the cross. Um, this one
can be a tough one, but it’s a good one. We ought to know
and saying, so let’s stand and give praise to God for the cross.